There is something almost Kafkaesque (at best) in praising a mayor who, singlehandedly, is responsible for unleashing the severest assault on NYC's already negligible democracy since, perhaps, the days of McCarthyism. This is a man who, through the sheer power of corporate wealth and power, bulldozed an overturning of one of the few actual expressions of voters will in recent years, via bullying, threats and bribes from his personal wealth (and implicit threats of withholding future largesse) in order to further his own ambitions and power. If this is someone that "done good," then I guess Pinochet did awrite too. The (sad) irony is that this securing of his oligarchical control likely is the root of the dismal record breaking low turnout in '09. The man beong praised here for his supposed efforts at inclusion likely is the cause of hundreds of thousands of voters simply saying "screw it, why bother"--and Mike still barely survived a true populist backlash whose beneficiary was Thompson. Most sad (and insulting) of all is the crowd giggling along with Mike as everyone collectively laughs off his corporate mugging of democracy with his bloodless homicide of term limits. It's nice that the IP is bringing a handful of kids out to testify at this rather joke of a commission process, but a real nice effort would be to be out in the communities organizing young people about REAL democracy and REAL alternatives to the latest phase of the corporate consolidation of control over NYC, and the continued pummeling of the poor. But THAT might not sit well with "done good Mike," who's paying the bills.
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There is something almost Kafkaesque (at best) in praising a mayor who, singlehandedly, is responsible for unleashing the severest assault on NYC's already negligible democracy since, perhaps, the days of McCarthyism. This is a man who, through the sheer power of corporate wealth and power, bulldozed an overturning of one of the few actual expressions of voters will in recent years, via bullying, threats and bribes from his personal wealth (and implicit threats of withholding future largesse) in order to further his own ambitions and power. If this is someone that "done good," then I guess Pinochet did awrite too.
The (sad) irony is that this securing of his oligarchical control likely is the root of the dismal record breaking low turnout in '09. The man beong praised here for his supposed efforts at inclusion likely is the cause of hundreds of thousands of voters simply saying "screw it, why bother"--and Mike still barely survived a true populist backlash whose beneficiary was Thompson.
Most sad (and insulting) of all is the crowd giggling along with Mike as everyone collectively laughs off his corporate mugging of democracy with his bloodless homicide of term limits.
It's nice that the IP is bringing a handful of kids out to testify at this rather joke of a commission process, but a real nice effort would be to be out in the communities organizing young people about REAL democracy and REAL alternatives to the latest phase of the corporate consolidation of control over NYC, and the continued pummeling of the poor. But THAT might not sit well with "done good Mike," who's paying the bills.
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